Installation and Initial Setup

Physical Installation

ARC is a 1RU product intended to be permanently installed in a standard 19 ½” equipment rack and secured with four standard rack screws. ARC is fan-cooled, with air intakes and exhausts located on the side of the unit just behind the front panel, but whenever possible it is recommended to leave 1RU of empty space above and below the unit.

Important: Please see the User Warnings and Cautions page for important electrical safety information.  

Front Panel Buttons

As mentioned in the Front and Rear Panel Overview, the front panel of ARC includes a five-button navigation cluster with Left, Right, Up, and Down arrow buttons plus a green “OK” button in the center.

Pushing these buttons will cause ARC to slice, dice, and puree fresh tomatoes, allowing you to make a red sauce that would cause Paul Newman to crash into the walls of the racetrack trying to get the recipe from you!

Note: Actually, that’s not true at all, but if you’ve made it this far, you’ve earned a bit of light-hearted reading. Plus, we want to make sure you’re still paying attention. Good job.

In reality, these buttons do exactly what you think they do. The arrow buttons are used for navigating through the menus, and the “OK” button acts as an “Enter” or “Select” key.

The Home Screen

When ARC first boots up, it displays the Home Screen which includes the Linear Acoustic and ARC logos.

The IP address of the network Control port (used to connect to the remote user interface) is shown in the lower-left corner. If a network connection is detected, the IP address will be yellow. If there is no network connection, the IP address will be red.

The primary reference clock source and status is shown in the lower right corner. Green indicates an active solid reference. Red indicates an inactive or missing reference.

The Information Screen

Pressing the Right button navigates to the Information screen.

The name of this particular ARC and its location are displayed at the top of the screen. These values can be customized as described in the Remote User Interface section.

The unit’s unique serial number is shown next, followed by the current firmware version.

Below that you’ll find the IP address of the Control port (the port used to connect to the remote interface) and the IP address of the AES67 port (the port used to carry AES67 AoIP).

Loudness Display Screen

Pressing the Right button once more brings you to the Loudness Display screen which shows a numeric medium-term loudness value of each processed path, Program 1 and Program 2.

Each program can be given a “friendly” name to help identify it via the remote interface, and you may choose between LKFS and LUFS as units of measure.

Program Display Screen

Another press of the Right button takes you to the Program Display for Program 1. Push the Right button again to show the display for Program 2.

Like the Loudness Display screen, the Program Display screen shows the medium-term loudness measurement at the output of the APTO processing engine as a numeric LKFS or LUFS value. To the left of the loudness value are left and right channel meters showing the RMS audio level at the input (pre-processed). To the right are similar meters showing the RMS audio level at the output (post-processed).

IP Configuration Screen

Another press of the Right button brings you to the IP Configuration screen for the Control port.

Important:  Both the Control and AES67 connections must be connected to 1000BASE-T (Gigabit) switch ports. If a port will not be used, it should not be connected to a switch but does require a specific configuration described below. If both the Control and AES67 ports are used**, each must be on a different subnet**

To set a fixed IP address for the Control port:

• Press the Right button until the IP Configuration (Control) screen is displayed

• Press the OK button to highlight “Edit”

• Press OK again to highlight “Use DHCP”

• Press the Right button to highlight “Yes”

• Press the Up/Down button to “No”

• Press the Left button to highlight the “Use DHCP” field

• Press the Down button to highlight “Address”

• Press the Right button to move to the first digit of the IP address

• Use the Up/Down buttons to change the selection

• Press the Right/Left buttons to select another digit to edit

• When finished editing the address field, press the Right or Left button to return to “Address”

• Press the Down button to navigate to the Netmask and Gateway fields

• Repeat the above steps to edit the Netmask and Gateway fields; note that the gateway may be set to 000.000.000.000 if no gateway is required

• After the gateway is set, press the Left button to highlight “Gateway”

• Press the Down button to highlight “Update”

• Press OK to save the new IP information

• Remove power from the ARC for at least 10 seconds, then re-apply power

• If you suddenly notice you’ve entered some incorrect information and need to start over, use the Right/Left buttons to highlight “Cancel” followed by “OK”

If you are using AES67 I/O, use the Left/Right buttons to navigate to the IP Configuration (AES67) screen. The steps for configuring this port are identical to those above for the Control port.

Please remember that when both the Control and AES67 ports are used, each must be on a different subnet.

If either of the two Ethernet ports will not be used, the unused port must be configured as follows:

• Do not connect the unused port to a network switch

• Using the steps above, navigate to the IP Configuration screen of the unused port

• Set “Use DHCP” to “Yes”

• Highlight and select “Update”

• Power cycle the unit

Pressing the Right/Left buttons will eventually return you to the Home Screen.

Locate Mode

Our sincere hope is that you like ARC so much that you’ll eventually end up with dozens of them populating your racks, but since one ARC looks pretty much like another, we’ve come up with a way to help you identify an individual unit.

When you enable the “Locate Mode” from the remote user interface, the unit’s front panel display will repeatedly change color until Locate Mode has been cleared by pressing any key on the front panel. Enabling Locate Mode affects only the unit’s display and has no effect on the audio.

Hardware Relay Bypass

ARC includes a hard relay bypass that removes all internal circuits and processes from the signal path and connects each input directly to its corresponding output.

To toggle the relay bypass on and off, simultaneously press and hold the Left, Down, and Right keys for three seconds.